- The two YouTube Partner Program tiers, and which one you need
- Step by step: how to check where you stand
- What "valid" views means, because this is where people get stuck
- The maths nobody puts in the title
- A real example: what this looked like for one client
- Common ways creators get stuck below the threshold
- Should you chase Shorts monetisation, or use Shorts for something else
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources worth reading
The short version: to earn money from YouTube Shorts you need to join the YouTube Partner Program, which means either 1,000 subscribers plus 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, or 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours in 12 months, and you need a linked AdSense account in a country where the programme operates. There is also a lower entry tier at 500 subscribers that unlocks some features but not ad revenue on Shorts. The numbers matter less than what happens after you hit them, and that part almost nobody tells you before you get there.
The two YouTube Partner Program tiers, and which one you need
YouTube runs two doors into the Partner Program, and creators mix them up constantly.
Tier one gets you in the building but not into the room with the money. You need 500 subscribers, at least 3 public uploads in the last 90 days, and then either 3,000 watch hours on long-form content in the past 12 months or 3 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days. Hitting tier one lets you use channel memberships, Super Thanks, and the shopping features. It does not turn on ads.
Tier two is the one that pays. You need 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 watch hours on long-form video in the past 12 months, or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days. Hit tier two, get accepted, link an AdSense account, and Shorts ads revenue starts flowing to you.
I've had three separate clients ask me why their channel "isn't monetised" when they'd only hit tier one. They'd seen the 500 subscriber number quoted somewhere, assumed that was the whole story, and stopped checking their dashboard. It's an easy mistake because YouTube's own help pages bury the distinction between the two tiers halfway down a page most people skim.
Step by step: how to check where you stand
- Open YouTube Studio and click Earn in the left menu. This shows your live progress against both watch hours/subscribers and the Shorts views threshold, updated daily.
- Check your subscriber count against 1,000, not 500, if your goal is ad revenue rather than just memberships.
- Look at the rolling 90-day Shorts view count, not lifetime views. A video that got 4 million views 100 days ago does not count toward your current total.
- Confirm you have no active Community Guidelines strikes. One active strike freezes eligibility even if your numbers qualify.
- Check you're resident in an eligible country. The Partner Program runs in over 100 countries but not all, and it has expanded gradually, so recheck if you were rejected on this basis more than a year ago.
- Link or create an AdSense account before you apply, because the review can stall if this step is missing.
- Apply through the Earn tab once your dashboard shows you've crossed the threshold. Review typically takes anywhere from a few days to about a month, and YouTube states most reviews are completed within 30 days.
What "valid" views means, because this is where people get stuck
YouTube doesn't count every view toward your 10 million. Views from looped or repeated plays by the same viewer in a short window, views that trip spam or bot detection, and views generated through paid promotion schemes designed purely to inflate numbers can all get excluded or flagged. This isn't a minor technicality. I've seen a channel sit at 9.6 million shown views on the public counter while the Studio dashboard reported only 6.2 million as valid toward the threshold, because a chunk of their traffic came from a cross-promotion swap that YouTube's systems treated as inorganic.
If your public view count and your Studio eligibility count don't match, trust the Studio number. That's the one that decides whether you get accepted.
The maths nobody puts in the title
Here's the part that gets skipped in most explainers, and it's the part that matters once you're through the door: Shorts ad revenue is small.
YouTube pools the ad revenue that runs between Shorts (the ads you see in the swipe feed) across all monetised creators, deducts music licensing costs, and splits what's left. Creators get roughly 45 percent of that pool for Shorts, compared with the 55 percent creators get on long-form video ads. Your slice of that 45 percent is based on your share of total Shorts views across the platform in a given period, not a fixed rate per view.
In practice, that works out to somewhere between $0.02 and $0.07 per 1,000 valid views for most channels, and it moves month to month depending on advertiser demand and how much music licensing eats into the pool. Compare that with long-form YouTube ad revenue, which commonly runs $2 to $8 per 1,000 views (often quoted as RPM), and you can see the gap. A Short that gets a million views might earn you £20 to £60. A long-form video with the same view count, well placed with mid-roll ads, could earn ten to fifty times that.
A real example: what this looked like for one client
A client of mine, running a home baking Shorts channel, hit 1,000 subscribers and crossed 10 million valid Shorts views in 11 weeks by posting daily 30-second recipe clips. fast growth, and she was thrilled when the Partner Program application went through.
Her first full month of monetised Shorts revenue was £41. She'd had over 14 million views that month across her Shorts. When I walked her through the maths, she realised the ad revenue alone was never going to replace her part-time retail job, even at that scale. What changed her income was using the Shorts audience to sell a £12 digital recipe pack through a link in her channel description and pinned comments. That pack brought in more in three weeks than four months of Shorts ad revenue combined.
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This is the uncomfortable bit most Shorts monetisation guides skip entirely: the ad money is almost never the point. Shorts are a discovery engine that YouTube's algorithm heavily favours for reach, and reach is worth chasing for what it lets you sell, not for what YouTube itself pays you per view. Treating Shorts ad revenue as your main income plan, at these rates, means you need tens of millions of monthly views just to match a modest part-time wage.
Common ways creators get stuck below the threshold
- Posting sporadically. YouTube's algorithm rewards consistency for Shorts specifically, and gaps of more than a week or two visibly slow view velocity for most channels.
- Reposting content lifted from TikTok with the watermark still visible. YouTube has been actively suppressing distribution on watermarked reposts since 2023, and channels built entirely on this content plateau hard.
- Mixing eligible and ineligible content types without checking. Fully looped, non-original compilation content can be excluded from the Shorts fund calculation and, in repeated cases, flagged for reduced distribution.
- Chasing subscriber count with giveaways or subscribe-for-subscribe schemes. These subscribers rarely watch anything, your engagement rate drops, and the algorithm quietly deprioritises your future uploads.
- Not checking the country eligibility list before investing months of effort, only to find the Partner Program isn't available where they're legally resident.
Should you chase Shorts monetisation, or use Shorts for something else
If your only goal is ad revenue from the Shorts feed itself, be honest with yourself about the scale you'd need. Ten million views in 90 days sounds huge and is achievable for the right niche and posting frequency, but the pay per view means you're building a high-effort, low-yield income stream unless you stack millions more views month after month.
Where Shorts earn their keep is as the front door to something else: a long-form channel with proper ad rates, a paid product, a service, an email list, a brand partnership. I tell every client the same thing: build the Shorts habit for reach, then have somewhere for that reach to land that pays better than the swipe feed does. The channels I've seen do best financially use Shorts almost like a billboard, pointing constantly at one thing worth money elsewhere.
Related guides live in the YouTube Help: 30 Guides to Channels, Subscribers, Monetisation, Thumbnails and Fixes.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need 1,000 subscribers or 500 to monetise Shorts?
You need 1,000 subscribers plus 10 million valid Shorts views in the past 90 days (or 4,000 long-form watch hours) to unlock ad revenue on Shorts. The 500 subscriber tier only unlocks memberships and Super Thanks, not ad monetisation.
How much does YouTube pay per 1,000 Shorts views?
Most monetised creators report earning somewhere between $0.02 and $0.07 per 1,000 valid Shorts views, since revenue comes from a shared ad pool split by view share rather than a fixed rate, and creators get roughly 45 percent of that pool after music licensing costs.
Why don't my public view numbers match my Partner Program progress?
YouTube excludes views it flags as invalid, looped, bot-driven, or generated through certain promotion schemes from the eligibility count shown in Studio's Earn tab, even though the public counter on the video keeps rising. Always check the Earn tab number, not the public view count, when tracking your progress.
Can Shorts revenue alone replace a full-time income?
For the vast majority of creators, no, not at current rates. A channel would need tens of millions of monthly views to match even a modest salary from Shorts ad revenue alone, which is why most creators who do well financially use Shorts to drive traffic toward a product, service, or long-form channel with far higher ad rates.
